This is a very very interesting card. It's utility isn't very apparent on first glance. In terms of straight value, Backpack is only ok. It costs an action, a card, and 2 resources in order to draw 3 cards. So basically you've spent an action and two resources to get 2 additional cards. That's not great value.

Where backpack becomes much better is if those cards that you draw synergize with each other. For example, if you're using a Jim deck with Grotesque Statue, Ritual Candles and Chthonian Stone, Backpack will increase the chances that you can have all three cards out at the same time. That is very valuable.

So look to put Backpack in item heavy decks in which the items themselves combo with each other. If the items do not have synergy with each other, I don't think Backpack is very good in terms of straight value.

The fun part is that when it jams, while shooting an enemy engaged with your partner, it still sort of "shoots" him :)

Dear FFG, this is a terribly Arkham-ish outcome :) C'mon, it jammed! It ain't gonna hurt my friend :)

But jokes aside. Is it any good? Well, it is very good at killing enemies with 3 hit points. Now this is of course great, since 3 is the new 2. And you're doing that with a bonkers bonus of +3 BUT:

• it takes 2 hand slots
• it is just so so bad, when it jams, with the enemy engaged

So not only you need an action to unjam it, that grants you a sucker punch from the enemy, but you also lost a precious shell and 2 actions. And recently enemies also like to Retaliate. So... it's a no-no in a lot of scenarios.

But let's find setups in which it may be good, I'm certainly not iterating through all possible options, but what I thought is:

• You're William Yorick in multiplayer, since your core ability let's you replenish ammo easily. Your company has to have options to help you out, when things go south. So advocate to go first on most occasions, which by the way plays nicely with Take the Initiative. Pack some options, for those corner cases, when your weapon will crap on you, like for example Stunning Blow, to shake off the enemy, or Dodge. You don't want to be that jerk damage dealer, that shouts "Mommy!", just because a mediocre mob got lucky
• You're Wendy Adams on a solo run and not really using hand slots a lot. Any weapon jams you can succesfully counter with her core ability. And all of a sudden you can deal with some enemies effectively, just like with your evade action. Only now it's for good.

Am I missing something?

Stealing a joke from the amazing podcast Drawn to the Flame (if you are a big fan of Arkham Horror and haven't heard of them, go listen to them now):

The flavor text should've read "Still no".

So, stolen jokes aside, this card seems like a pretty nice upgrade over the first. Barring Premonition it's hard to know what kind of token you'll draw. Mystic does have more solutions to this (Olive McBride and Dark Prophecy, for example) but Defiance will still miss from time to time.

This version is a lot more reliable, especially when using any mystic trick to draw more tokens, or maybe seal something. However, this card costs 2 XP, which is a big hurdle. The nice thing about Defiance is that since it's 0 XP, you can put it in your starter deck and replace when you get better cards. It having a icon also means it's never really dead: even if you don't have a way to see more tokens or manipulate the bag, you can just commit it and name the token you want to see the least.

For this card, you need to invest 2 XP. That's a big ask, especially on a skill card you'll use once per scenario at most. As such, unless you have a way to ensure you have a token to draw (Dark Prophecy) I don't really think this is worth it.

Oh, and since both Carcosa and Forgotten Age have ways of manipulating the chaos bag based on your choices, I think the 2 XP becomes even less worth it, as especially in Carcosa you will probably know what tokens are in there.

Move aside Lightning Gun the new king of weapons is here!

Comparing it directly to Lightning Gun, you save two resources, get one more ammo and do one more damage. Note the damage is multiplicative with the ammo so you get potentially 16 damage to Lightning Gun's 9.

The first drawback is the body slot. Notably this rules out Bandolier. Thus a flame wielding Guardian will have to fully commit to exclusively using the Flamethrower by using Venturer, Extra Ammunition and Custom Ammunition. Contraband is also interesting if it is available to you.

The other disadvantage is you must be engaged with the enemy. Normally you do not want to risk shooting your friends with your high powered guns so you would want to engage anyways but this weapon actively requires you to be engaged. This may mean a loss of an action for a harried investigator. Also you may want to engage multiple enemies so its a good idea to bring Taunt along as well to avoid attacks of opportunity.

It still has one less fight then Lightning Gun but both are usually sufficient to guarantee success on all but the tentacle and the super negative token you get on Hard and Expert.

Overall I think despite these weaknesses this is by far the most efficient purifier of xenos scum, err I mean mythos monsters available today.

The M1918 BAR is also a very fun weapon and may become more efficient against very low health enemies, but there are too few of those around to compete.

Since no-one seems to have noticed, ill just point out that this card fits perfectly into any deck using Dark Horse, where it's restriction is suddenly "at least 1 higher". For Dark Horse Duke ("Ashcan" Pete), This is basically the perfect skill card to go with all your passive stat boosters.

Of course, Even for Dark Horse its basically a 3rd and 4th copy of Unexpected Courage.